At a time when the unemployment rate is nearing double-digits, President Obama’s OSHA nominee, David Michaels, threatens to be an occupational hazard.

He’s also a radical. Conservatives who were outraged by Van Jones should be apoplectic about his tenure when they consider that — according to their website — OSHA “inspected 38,579 workplaces during Fiscal Year 2006.”

David Michaels was behind the junk-science efforts to smear Bisphenol A (BPA) , an innovative chemical used to make plastics stronger. A few months ago, I wrote about BPA. Here’s an excerpt:

If you’re unfamiliar with Bisphenol A (BPA), it is a chemical used to make lightweight, versatile, durable, high-performance plastics. It’s also one of the most extensively tested products in the world. For example, as Norris Alderson, the FDA’s associate commissioner for science, said just last year, “a large body of available evidence” demonstrates that products made with it are safe.

As I went on to describe in that piece, the attacks on BPA were headed by organizations funded by liberals such as George Soros. As the Washington Times recently reported,

Mr. Michaels heads a group called the Project on Scientific Knowledge and Public Policy (SKAPP), which is extremely friendly to plaintiffs’ lawyers and is funded in large part by George Soros’ Open Society Institute.

The anti-BPA scare-campaign cost consumers untold millions of dollars and untold numbers of jobs. That’s not to mention the amount of emotional damage this junk-science inflicted on Americans who were sure they had harmed their baby by giving them the wrong plastic bottle. … Oh yeah, Michaels’ also helped line the pockets of trial lawyers who made money by suing manufacturers of products made with BPA. All of this, despite countless evidence that BPA was safe.

Sadly, avoiding an over-regulated business climate that kills jobs and scares parents is not all we have to worry about.

Like Obama’s other “Czars” and appointees, Michaels’ brand of radicalism extends beyond his area of expertise. In fact, Michaels sees even the 2nd Amendment as a work-place “regulatory” issue where he might, as head of OSHA, intervene.

Compared to Michaels, Mr. Van Jones is Mr. Dick Van Dyke.

The same geniuses who gave us “classic” movies like “Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot,” “Gigli” and “Catwoman” are at it again.  Only this time, their Hollywood flop isn’t just a bad-but-over-hyped movie, but a decision to stifle creativity and the rights of consumers.  

As everyone knows, the music industry allows — and even encourages — us to download songs off of our personal cd and upload a personal copy to our computer and iPod.  As a trade-off, we often purchase songs for $.99 from them.  Millions of Americans do this every day.  But the movie industry is so opposed to the modern notion that consumers should be permitted to take ownership of their own dvds that they actually sued — and were granted a temporary injunction against — an innovative product called RealDVD which would permit consumers to make personal copies of their dvd collection.  

This lawsuit is so bad that even the LA Times authored an editorial this week, titled “Hollywood Control Freaks,” which says:

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Ohio is crucial to America’s future. Ohioans put George W. Bush over the top in `04. And it was when he lost Ohio that John McCain’s hopes for a come-from-behind victory went up in smoke. No Republican has ever been elected President without winning the Buckeye State.

So when Ohio talks, professional pols should listen. And Ohioans are speaking up most strongly against ObamaCare abortions. The latest poll shows more than two out of three Ohioans oppose taxpayer-funded abortions. Most interesting, the poll shows that fully half (50.7% to 31.6%) of President Obama’s voters in Ohio oppose being forced to pay for the killing of the unborn. There’s no gender gap in these figures, either. Ohio women oppose it by a powerful 66.4% to 17.1%; Ohio’s men oppose this cruel and unjust practice by 68.9% to 21.9%).

Opposition to taxpayer-funded abortion spans the entire state with the northwest recording an astounding 86.3% against. Even in northeast Ohio, 55.1% oppose. In no part of the state does this idea come close to commanding majority support.

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Yesterday’s Washington Post’s front page is a study in cross-cutting pressures on our new President. “Poll Shows Obama Slipping on Key Issues” reads the four-column headline.

Amazing. But then, in smaller type, read this: “The Race to Reform.” That lesser headline is the Administration’s answer to the slippage the grim polling figures disclose.

Since his much-hailed 100-day mark last April, President Obama’s handling of health care, the Post’s poll reveals, has declined in public approval from 57 percent to 49 percent. Disapproval has increased from 29 percent to 44 percent.

Of particular worry to this still-new Administration is the hemorrhaging of support among the independents. Among these voters, Obama held a long lead on his health care proposals back in April—53 percent approval to only 30 percent disapproval.

April, T.S. Eliot wrote, is the cruelest month, but today the President can only look back longingly for it. Today, his health care proposals have taken on a sickly pallor among independents. Forty-four percent of them approve what he’s offering; 49 percent disapprove. That’s a stunning loss of 1 in 5 independent voters to the President’s team on health care.

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The discussion over quality in higher education and maintaining standards of academic excellence in American colleges took an ugly turn March 2nd when Harvard law professor and former Clinton Administration lightning rod Lani Guinier declared that standardized testing is racist.

Guinier’s remarks were part of a televised forum on C-SPAN about the “state of the black union” in America, during which she told moderator Tavis Smiley that standardized testing, such as that used in the college admissions process, is a form of “modern scientific racism.”

For those of you who cannot quite recall Guinier’s brief appearance on the national political stage, she was Bill Clinton’s choice for assistant attorney general for civil rights in 1993.  I recall some initial excitement over the fact that a black woman had been nominated for such high position but her nomination quickly unraveled as her record came to light. 

Guinier’s agenda of pure racial quotas and proportional racial representation in local elections was so profoundly radical that Sen. Carol Moseley-Braun, the only black woman in the U.S. Senate at the time, urged Clinton to withdraw the nomination, which he did.

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I would like to thank all of my friends in the conservative community for their humbling support in my bid for Chairman of the Republican National Committee. I know my late entry and lack of membership on the committee made it an uphill battle for us, but with your help and your voice, we made a major national impact and re-affirmed that conservative principles are alive and well in the Republican Party.

Just because the race is over doesn’t mean our jobs are finished. Now is the time to take our message of reform, especially the need to return the party to the grassroots, to the new leadership team at party headquarters.

Last week, the 168 members of the Republican National Committee elected Michael Steele as their national chairman. I was proud to be a significant part of that effort, not only by encouraging my supporters to elect him, but also by assuring the members of the RNC, and Republicans following the race nationwide, that Michael Steele is taken seriously by conservatives like us. Governor Ronald Reagan once told his staff, “the person who agrees with you 80 percent of the time is a friend and an ally — not a 20 percent traitor.” While Michael Steele and I may differ on our approach to some aspects of conservatism, he is still a strong ally in the fight to defeat Democrats and a supporter of the conservative Republican platform, and I look forward to working with him as we energize, inspire, and expand the base.

This election was a battle to see who can best unite these members – or at least 85 of them – to capture a majority of the votes in the short term. But in the long term, we need a plan that will rebuild the party by articulating conservative principles, inspiring our base, decentralizing authority, and building the technical infrastructure that will unite the millions of Republican voters behind a common goal of a conservative resurgence across the country.

Republican voters have spoken – at the ballot box, with their donations, through grassroots activities, and in online communication. We’ve all heard and echoed their message: let’s get back to basics. Now we have someone on the national stage who can do something about it, including returning party operations to the state and local leadership, dominating technology in order to position us to win, and preparing for our toughest redistricting battle yet. Michael Steele has assured members of the conservative community that we will not only have a voice, but a place at the table as decisions directing the RNC are made. And I don’t know about all of you, but I’m ready to be put back to work.